Can you define your life in just six words?

This is the challenge Larry Smith presented to his online community, SMITH MAGAZINE, in 2006. His quest was inspired by the legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a novel in just six words. His heart-breaking result: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Giving the form a personal twist, Smith reimagined the six-word novel idea as the Six-Word Memoir, challenging contributors to create a half-dozen words of self-reflection. The constraint, it turned out, fueled rather than inhibited creativity: "Sometimes lonely in a crowded bed." Inspired by the form's popularity in schools, Smith recently called for submissions for illustrated Six-Word Memoirs, in which he asked students, whether in grade school or grad school, to create a piece of artwork that enhanced their memoirs. The voices in Things Don't Have to Be Complicated are younger than typical, but no less profound:

Jan 15 2013:
There is something, somehow positive about this exercise... I was struck by how a gravestone gives the details of the day we are born, and the day we die... but the rest of our live is relegated to a hyphen... 6 words at least fits on our stone and tells everyone something more personal about us.

Jan 15 2013:
Lots of comments on how life cannot be simplified into 6 words - whilst this is true and life is too big to sum up in 6 words - one commenter stated "How very American" - I can only surmise that this may be a reference to how fast life is becoming - fast food, fast love, fast friends (social networking), fast definition of life etc. - and whilst the intent of the question may have been to get a fast summary of life - there is something (even if unintentional) very good about this question. What I like about it, is that it drives us to simplify our life into 6 items - and that is very valuable. Because our lives are becoming too complex and noisy. We cram too much into our lives and we forget about the basics that make our lives worthwhile. Paraphrasing from the movie Dead Poet's Society - "Medicine, law, business, engineering - these are all noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we sustain life for" This question is important in its capacity to drive us to think about simplifying our lives - to drive out the chatter and the noise and get back to what we sustain our lives for - why we exist. Is it to make more money than we need or can take with us, or to gain power that cannot save us from our last breath? Or is it to simplify our lives and learn once again to embrace that which we truly live for - and that is evidenced in the words of the contributors here - words like, "Goodness", "Laugh", "Learn", "Love", "Passion", "Inspire", "Give" - we can only remember to do these things when we simplify and go back to the basics of life.

Jan 15 2013:
Lots of people on SMITH, and ever moreso on SMITHteens.com really treat six-word memoirs as their daily journal. Some have done thousands of them. And it's pretty cool to then look back at where you mind/life was (in six words) when you scroll through your earlier mini-memoirs.

This is what I keep realizing over and over again in my life. Although we all have our unique tastes and talents, in the end, we are all human beings with the same basic needs and the same hunger for love and truth.
(Very good question by the way!)

Jan 15 2013:
I would love to have Friday's featured Six-Word Memoirs on SMITH all come from TED chatters. We feature 10 a day, and one is "memoir of the day" that goes out to twitter, facebook, tumblr). Come on over to smithmag.net/sixwords and you can share these same sixes or write new ones there.

Jan 15 2013:
In looking at the sample via the Washington Post, I was struck by how so many of the older students focused their tales on dreams and breaking free of rules and boundaries, pushing for themselves to be accepted for who they are, whereas the younger ones are very straightforward, dealing with life (afraid of bears, wanting to go to college). Is this typical of book?

Jan 15 2013:
That's a great observation. I think the younger kids, especially ones who haven't hit puberty, are in their own way more rational (that's not exactly the right word). But they're very much in the moment. Broadly (very) speaking older kids have more angst but also more dreams. And this is not only typical of this book but very consistent with what we see on SMITHmag and SMITHTeens, and what I hear when I do workshops or go into classrooms.

And I did a project with AARP Magazine a few years ago and the memoirs from older folks tended to be really positive ("Sixty. Single. Rich. Call me collect") and full of life lessons ("When cookies are passed, take one" "Sign the card, eat the cake").

Jan 15 2013:
I suspect that part of the beauty of being a young kid is that you live in the moment. To a certain degree i guess the seniors do to some degree as well. In between we spend maybe too much of our time thinking of the consequences that our choices today might bring...